Dribbles, drabbles and everything in between.

[alyse]

While I was suffering from jetlag last night and wrote some drabbles I was musing about why I liked them so much and came to the conclusion that it's for the same reason I like writing haikus. I like the idea of working within constraints to be as creative as possible. I also like the compactness of them - the idea that you can concentrate on a single image, a single emotion and let that ring out, strong and clear, unsullied by any extraneous details. There's a purity to the form that appeals to me. It's like capturing a single point in time.

And I like the idea of structure too. That doesn't mean that I always like the idea of complying with a set structure, because I don't. But I do like to experiment, and within drabbles that gives me the chance to do that, to play around with 100 words and 100 words only, pruning and tweaking until I have that single, clear note. Hopefully. It doesn't always work, of course, as is always the way in fic but far from limiting me I find those constraints free me, letting me focus.

There's another benefit too. I think it was syxer7 who posted a link to an article about pruning your darlings. I've seen the article before, but it still includes a lot of good advice. And you know what? With drabbles, and haikus, you have no choice but the prune. You're constrained to do so. I find it does the equivalent of exercising fic muscles. I usually go over by a few words, often not many, but then I have to fit it to exactly 100 words and I find the challenge of doing that exhilirating. It forces me to look at what I've written on a word by word basis, and select each and every word carefully.

Would I like to write drabbles all of the time? No, of course not. The challenge I set myself in the short term would be stifling in the long term, but I like setting myself these challenges, of stretching myself like this even if sometimes I'm not successful. I've said this to friends before, but I'd far rather try something new and fail than sit in a rut, not because I'm afraid that any potential audience I have would get bored (we've all seen that some people produce the same kind of work again and again and still have an avid audience) but because I would.

Drabbles are very good as well at providing a mechanism for mental cleansing, clearing out that fic closet in my brain. Sometimes I have very clear images or emotions that don't fit into any particular story, or where the rest of the story simply fails to materialise and writing drabbles provides me not only with a chance to stretch my writing muscles but to put those single images down on paper and therefore exorcise them. The same went for the Alphabet fics I wrote for the New Professionals.

I try to build some kind of symmetry into my drabbles, some kind of reasonance I suppose, and therefore I was really satisfied when I finally went looking for Geoff Ryman's novel website. For those that don't already know, I read a review of one of Ryman's novels in SFX before I went away and was intrigued. The novel was called Lust, had a very good review and an interesting concept. A young man discovers that he has the power to summon anyone, alive or dead, to his bed and can bend them to his will. It's a journey of erotic discovery, heavy on the sex but also on the morality. How far into immorality will the protagonist sink? Will the act of manipulating others for his own carnal desires corrupt him beyond redemption or will he look into the Abyss and face what he's become?

I tried to buy it before I went on holiday and none of the big bookshops locally (and being a University City with two universities and many other higher education institutes we have a large number given the small size of the population) had it. Didn't have time to look online and have it delivered, so I shelved it. I'm recommencing my search tomorrow, and may end up having to order it online. However, I also checked out his online novel today.

http://www.ryman-novel.com/

What does this have to do with drabbles I hear you ask? Well, I'll let the website tell you in its own words:

There are seven carriages on a Bakerloo Line train, each with 36 seats. A train in which every passenger has a seat will carry 252 people. With the driver, that makes 253.

This novel describes an epic journey from Embankment station, to the Elephant and Castle, named after the Infanta de Castile who stayed there, once. This is an example of the verbal imprecision that costs British industry millions of pounds a year.

Numbers, however, are reliable. So that the illusion of an orderly universe can be maintained, all text in this novel, less headings, will number 253 words.

That's right. There are 253 individual sections, one for each character, and each section consists of 253 words. That appeals to my sense of symmetry. And I like it. Each section is a glimpse into someone's life, and there are interconnections between some of the passengers, which weaves a much richer tapestry than the synopsis might suggest. Some are clear - the passengers know one another, work at the same firm or know someone in common. Others are less clear - a link from a taxi driver leads to someone who was robbed by another taxi driver. It's intriguing and held my interest right until the end although it won't be to everyone's taste. Sometimes Ryman tries to be too clever, and it falls a bit flat. Other times he comes up with a stroke of genius. And one of the characters is even a slash writer.

I'd seen that particular entry before - someone scanned it in (the novel is now available offline from places like Amazon, although how it works in book format when it relies so heavily on hyperlinks I don't know) and sent it to me. I strongly suspect it may have been charlotteamess although I'm quite possibly wrong. But I wonder why it took me so long to find this website.

It's just my thing.

Comments

[charlotteamess.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was me :)

The slash author bit just jumped out at me - I wonder why?

Re:

[alyse]

I thought that was you :) Thanks for clarifying.

And I've no idea why the 'slash' bit would leap out at you.

::whistles innocently::